OCZ has been at the forefront of solid state drive technology since the format first began gaining popularity among consumers. Indeed it was thanks to their efforts and other leading manufacturers who helped bring lower-cost MLC NAND based drives to market. In the past two years we have seen huge strides in SSD development, and with the newer generations of flash memory controllers, read/write speeds just keep getting faster and faster. OCZ's latest series of performance SSDs, the Vertex 2 and Agility 2, both make use of the SandForce 1200, and have proven themselves to be very fast performers in our reviews.


Despite more and more mainstream users adopting SSDs for their desktop systems, the majority of drives continue to be manufactured in the 2.5" notebook format. When it comes to flash memory drives, space is less of an issue and the 2.5" size is more versatile. As OCZ points out however, a 3.5" drive has a lower cost per gigabyte and is more easily integrated into desktop and server applications without the need for adapters. They now offer both their Vertex 2 and Agility 2 drives in a 3.5" format, and it is the former that we will be reviewing today.

Join me as I take a closer look at the OCZ 120Gb Vertex 2 SATA II 3.5" SSD.